Review: Oil, Power, and War by Matthieu Auzanneau
By Frank Kaminski, Mud City Press
In Oil, Power, and War, French journalist Matthieu Auzanneau presents a comprehensive, provocative history of humankind's relationship with oil.
Review: Fair-Weather Brother by Pogoat
By Frank Kaminski, Mud City Press
Fair-Weather Brother is a portrait of the many environmental, economic and social challenges plaguing India today. The novella’s author, who goes by the pseudonym Pogoat, lives in India and thus knows of these issues firsthand.
Blind Spot and Fuel: a Review of Two Peak Oil Documentaries from 2008
By Frank Kaminski, Mud City Press
These two documentaries on the world oil crisis came out in 2008, a time of growing concern over humankind’s energy future. In the decade since then, public interest in the issue has waned, but the relevance of these films hasn’t...
Empty by Suzanne Weyn (a Peak Oil Novel for Young Readers)
By Frank Kaminski, Mud City Press
Aimed at readers aged 12 to 14, this novel successfully blends high school drama and adventure with an important message about the world oil crisis.
Review: Lifeline by Catherine McGuire
By Frank Kaminski, Mud City Press
McGuire’s book is an adventure that scores on every front, from its tense action scenes, to its finely realized characters and emotionally involving drama, to its richly rendered settings, to the intriguing irony of its double-entendre title.
Review: Energy Return on Investment by Charles A. S. Hall
By Frank Kaminski, Mud City Press
Hall invented the very term energy return on investment, and he’s done decades of seminal research on the phenomenon that it describes. As the current shale oil miracle goes the way of all mirages—causing the issue of energy depletion to reenter the public discourse in a big way—one can only hope that Hall’s ideas will draw a great deal of well-deserved notice.
A Review of Two Books by John Michael Greer: Dark Age America and The Retro Future
By Frank Kaminski, Mud City Press
John Michael Greer acknowledges that his aim with Dark Age America is an ambitious one. The book is his attempt to sketch out the likely course of industrial society over the next 500 years, with a particular emphasis on the United States. These days, the word progress has come to mean deterioration far more often than improvement. This is the central tenet of The Retro Future,...
Review: Shrinking the Technosphere by Dmitry Orlov
By Frank Kaminski, Mud City Press
When the average person thinks about technology, the first thing that comes to mind isn’t a family dog or cat. Nor would one likely consider a flock of chickens, a packet of seeds or a sack of potatoes to be examples of technology. But technology thinker Dmitry Orlov, in his book Shrinking the Technosphere, argues that that’s exactly what they are.